As we prepare for Hispanic Heritage Month, which is celebrated in September, and look at the literature available across the grades, a question arises. What does it mean to be Hispanic? Is language a defining characteristic? If so, how is it that so many of the children I work with every day, with such apellidos as García, Martínez, and Delossantos, speak only English? Or are family roots in a Spanish-speaking country more essential? How recent should those roots be? At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I wonder if “Anglo” Americans consider people from Spain less Hispanic than Latin Americans? The more precise term chicano refers specifically to people of Mexican heritage, with a prominent emphasis upon the indigenous, especially Aztec, part of that heritage. Most Mexicans, and most Latin Americans as well, are mestizo, with both “Indian” and Spanish “blood,” not to mention the African background of many Caribbean and South American Hispanics. The books in this bibliography go some distance toward delineating, even if indirectly, the breadth of culture and experience included in what it means to be Hispanic. Joe Hayes’s retelling of La Llorona/The Weeping Woman indicates the conflict of class and culture that has existed ever since two groups of people–one powerful, the other subjugated–came together. Matthew Gollub’s Uncle Snake goes back further, to the timeless days of folktales, before the Spaniards came. Others are quite up-to-date and reflect newer conflicts. Whatever else might be involved, however, being Hispanic or being a Hispanic writer does not mean being limited to ethnic issues. The grandmother in Yuyi Morales’s Just a Minute faces Death with a personal panache and humor that cross all racial boundaries; and Borges, one of the greatest 20th-century authors in any language, moves comfortably from Argentinian gauchos to speculative inquiries into the nature of the universe and being. English and Spanish, the two languages most common to Hispanic authors, are–behind Chinese–the most widely spoken and written languages in the world. Books by and about Hispanics continue to flourish, and readers of all cultures profit thereby.–Coop Renner

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Fiction

ADA, Alma Flor. My Name Is María Isabel. illus. by K. Dyble Thompson. S & S. 1994. Tr $16.95. ISBN 0-689-31963-0. Gr 2-4–Trying to adjust to her new school and to being called Mary López, María Isabel wishes that problems could be solved for real people just as they are solved for characters in a book. Her wish comes true in this early chapter book about belonging and speaking up for yourself. (Spanish Edition: Me Llamo María Isabel.) ARGUETA, Jorge. Xochitl and the Flowers/Xóchitl, la niña de las flores. illus. by Carl Angel. Children’s Book Press. 2003. RTE $16.95. ISBN 0-89239-181-2 Gr 1-4–An expatriate Salvadoran family tries to re-create the flower business they had back home in the small yard of their San Francisco apartment, but their landlord is adamant that his building is residential only. Angel’s full-page, full-color illustrations are warm and detailed, and young readers will root for the family’s success against zoning restrictions. COHN, Diana. Dream Carver. illus. by Amy Córdova. Chronicle. 2002. Tr $15.95. ISBN 0-8118-1244-8. K-Gr 4–Mateo, a young Mexican, wants to take his people’s traditional wood carving style into new territory by enlarging the scale of his artwork. Córdova’s woodcut-style illustrations reflect the brightly painted, and justly famous, Oaxacan figures, as well as suggesting their material. This tribute to traditional crafts and to the individual vision opens a new way of seeing. COHN, Diana. ¡Sí, Se Puede!/Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A. tr. by Sharon Franco. illus. by Francisco Delgado. Cinco Puntos. 2002. Tr $15.95. ISBN 0-938317-66-0; pap. $7.95. ISBN 0-938317-89-X. Gr 1-4–When the janitors’ union in Los Angeles decides to strike for a living wage, young Carlos and his classmates show their support for Carlos’s mother and other underpaid workers by joining the picket line. The child’s-eye narrative, inspired by an actual strike that occurred in 2000, presents a complex issue in a simple way, and both text and illustrations point out the ethnic identity of many of the families involved. ELYA, Susan Middleton. Oh No, Gotta Go! illus. by G. Brian Karas. Putnam. 2003. RTE $14.99. ISBN 0-399-23493-4. PreS-Gr 3–In this charmingly written picture book, Elya’s tale of a bilingual family’s Sunday afternoon drive, interrupted by the daughter’s realization that she has to GO, gallops along in jaunty couplets, rhyming Spanish with English, but always providing contextual settings for the Spanish words. Expressive illustrations, with pencil shadings and bright blocks of color, and a glossary complete the package. MORA, Pat. Tomás and the Library Lady. illus. by Raul Colón. Knopf. 1997. Tr $17. ISBN 0-679-80401-3; PLB $18.99. ISBN 0-679-90401-8; pap $6.99. ISBN 0-375-80349-1. Gr 1-4–Mora’s slice-of-life account tells of the son of migrant workers (inspired by the boyhood of Hispanic author and educator Tomás Rivera) whose horizons and linguistic skills are thrown wide open by the guidance of a friendly librarian. The hardships of migrant life and the dreams that books and learning provide are carefully delineated in both text and muted illustrations. (Spanish edition: Tomás y la Señora de la Biblioteca) WINTER, Jeanette. Calavera Abecedario: A Day of the Dead Alphabet Book. illus. by author. Harcourt. 2004. RTE $16. ISBN 0-15-205110-4. K-Gr 4–Don Pedro’s family spends the entire year making papier-mache skeletons for Mexico’s fall celebration of the Day of the Dead, a time of remembrance rather than regret. The folk-art style of Winter’s illustrations embodies the upbeat tone in this alphabet book couched in a story that makes clear the differences between Halloween and the Day of the Dead.

Nonfiction

GOLLUB, Matthew. Uncle Snake. illus. by Leovigildo Martinez. Tortuga. 2004. PLB $16. ISBN 0-688-13945-0. pap. $6.95. ISBN 1-889-91032-5. Gr 1-4–Inspired by Mexican folklore, Gollub’s tale explains how lightning entered the world and how it should be revered rather than feared. A curious boy enters a forbidden cave, full of snakes with human heads, beginning a vividly dreamlike series of events culminating in his transformation into a serpent of light. Martínez’s stylized, exaggerated illustrations beautifully embody the strangeness of a time before lightning. (Spanish edition: Tío Culebra) HAYES, Joe. La Llorona/The Weeping Woman: An Hispanic Legend Told in Spanish & English. illus. by Vicki Trego Hill & Mona Pennypacker. Cinco Puntos. 2004. Tr $16.95. ISBN 0-938317-86-5; pap. $5.95. ISBN 0-938317-02-4. Gr 1-6–After a Spanish husband decides to divorce his Indian wife and marry into his proper station, the spurned woman, in a fit of madness, throws their children into the river. She dies of grief, and her ghost endlessly roams the waters searching for those she has lost. Though class and ethnic differences provide the undercurrent, the terror of being snatched away is what propels this story. HOYT-GOLDSMITH, Diane. Three Kings Day: A Celebration at Christmastime. photos. by Lawrence Migdale. Holiday House. 2004. RTE $16.95. ISBN 0-8234-1839-1. K-Gr 4–Well-captioned color photographs and an enlightening text focus on how one New York City family of Puerto Rican and Ecuadoran descent prepares for and celebrates Three Kings Day (January 6, Epiphany). MORALES, Yuyi. Just a Minute: a Trickster Tale and Counting Book. illus. by author. Chronicle. 2003. Tr $15.95. ISBN 0-8118-3758-0. Gr 1-4–Grandma Beetle tricks Death by making him wait as she counts her way through her daily chores and by inviting him to join the birthday celebration (hers!) that that she is preparing. Señor Calavera’s impatience is apparent in his body (bone?) language and in his expressive skull-face. His white skeleton contrasts sharply with the rich liveliness of Grandma Beetle, her grandchildren, and the contents of her house. WINTER, Jonah. Frida. illus. by Ana Juan. Scholastic. 2002. RTE $16.95. ISBN 0-590-20320-7; pap. $5.99. ISBN 0-439-33118-8. K-Gr 3–Winter emphasizes the human framework of Kahlo’s life: her loneliness, the pain of her injuries, and the happiness that art represented. The phantasmagorical illustrations, exemplified in the cover art depicting the artist as a heavily browed infant riding on the back of the feathered serpent of Aztec mythology, reflect her imagination and the vibrant colors of Mexico’s art and architecture.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

Fiction

ALLENDE, Isabel. City of the Beasts. 2002. Tr ISBN 0-06-050918-X; PLB $21.89. ISBN 0-06-050917-1; pap. $7.99. ISBN 0-06-053503-2. ––––. Kingdom of the Golden Dragon. 2004. Tr ISBN 0-06-058942-6; PLB $20.89. ISBN 0-06-058943-4. ––––. Forest of the Pygmies. 2005. Tr ISBN 0-06-076196-2; PLB $20.89. ISBN 0-06-076197-0. ea. vol: tr. by Margaret Sayers Peden. HarperCollins. Tr $19.99. Gr 7-10–In this trilogy, Allende turns from adult literary fiction to young adult adventure laced with ecological and social concerns. American Alexander Cold travels with his reporter grandmother and her Amazonian-Canadian protégé to remote parts of the globe. Between them, Alexander and Nadia form an implicit portrait of many American Latinos, firmly rooted in the American present, yet tied to Native American mystical beliefs. (Spanish editions: La Ciudad de los Bestias; El Reino del Dragón de Oro; El Bosque de los Pigmeos) CISNEROS, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. Random. 1994. Tr $24. ISBN 0-679-43335-X. Gr 6 Up–Rosa Vargas “cries every day for the man who left without even leaving a dollar for bologna.” Those final two words mark the distinctive tone of Cisneros’s narrator, Esperanza: her eye for the uncommon detail that lifts the mundane into the specific and artistic. Funny, pointed, laconic, maybe even iconic, this is the story of a girl who refuses to let poverty, rats, drunken fathers and husbands, or the past hold her back. MARTINEZ, Agnes. Poe Park. Holiday House. 2004. Tr $16.95. ISBN 0-8234-1834-0. Gr 4-7–Enoch expects the summer after fifth grade to be a nonstop celebration; instead his best friend is shot and killed, and his older, frightening half-brother comes from Puerto Rico to live. Gang violence and family love struggle for the upper hand as Enoch narrates his sorrows and joys. MEYER, Carolyn. Rio Grande Stories. Harcourt. 1994. Tr $12. ISBN 0-15-200548-X; pap. $6. ISBN 0-15-200066-6. Gr 5-8–As part of a project to raise money for their school, seventh-graders of various ethnicities–Hispanic, Pueblo, Black, Jewish, Anglo–research their own backgrounds to create a book celebrating the unique mix that is northern New Mexico. Meyer successfully blends the stories of the students’ personal explorations with excerpts from their “book” in a creative format that reads like the account of a real project. MIKAELSEN, Ben. Red Midnight. HarperCollins. 2002. Tr $15.95. ISBN 0-380-97745-1; PLB $15.89. ISBN 0-06-001228-5; pap. $5.99. ISBN 0-380-80561-8. Gr 5-9–Santiago, 12, and his four-year-old sister escape the massacre of their family and fellow Guatemalan villagers during the 1980s civil war. They make their way north, in a small sailboat that belonged to their uncle, to safety in the United States, but not before encountering storms, hunger, small-time pirates, and enough fear for a lifetime. A blistering tale of survival, tucked within a deep social conscience. RICE, David. Crazy Loco. Dial. 2001. Tr $16.99. ISBN 0-8037-2598-1; pap. $5.99. ISBN 0-14-250056-9. Gr 7-10–The sadness at the core of certain of these seriocomic tales adds depth and weight to plot details that might sound conventional in summary–a broken family moving in with the mother’s father, the duties of altar boys, a boy’s crush on an older girl. Set in mostly Hispanic South Texas, but universal in theme, this powerful collection speaks authoritatively of young lives. SALDAÑA, René, Jr. The Jumping Tree: A Novel. Delacorte. 2001. Tr $14.95. ISBN 0-385-32725-0; pap. $5.50. ISBN 0-440-22881-6. Gr 5-8–Small-town life along the Texas-Mexico border comes vividly to life in these tales narrated by Rey, who breaks his arm proving to his friends that he’s macho and shops with his dad for his first pair of boots. But larger issues emerge, too, including Anglos disparaging the Spanish language and an uncle shot to death on the streets of Mexico. The flavor and texture are puro tejano; the undergirding certainties and doubts are universal. SOTO, Gary. Taking Sides. 1991. Tr ISBN 0-15-284076-1; pap. ISBN 0-15-284077-X. ––––. Pacific Crossing. 1992. Tr ISBN 0-15-259187-7; pap. ISBN 0-15-259188-5. ea. vol: Harcourt. Tr $17; pap. $8. Gr 5-9–Soto’s evocation of adolescent males is virtually perfect, from their obsessions with their developing bodies to the emotional fragility and (sometimes) tenderness masked by bravado. In these titles, Lincoln Mendoza, only son of a single mother, has the chance to move out of his mostly Mexican-American neighborhood into a more upscale one and to travel to Japan as an exchange student. Both experiences widen his horizons and force him to consider what his culture means. (Spanish editions: Tomando Partido and Cruzando el Pacífico) TALBERT, Marc. A Sunburned Prayer. S & S. 1995. Tr $14. ISBN 0-689-80125-4; pap. $4.50. ISBN 0-689-81326-0. Gr 5-8–The conflicted and conflicting emotions that constitute family love roil 11-year-old Eloy’s thoughts as he makes a 17-mile pilgrimage hoping that God will answer his prayer and that the special soil of the church in Chimayó, NM, will heal his grandmother, who is dying of cancer. Along the way he finds a new friend in a stray dog and, once he returns home, sees hope that his persistence may lead to less strained relations among the people he loves. TAYLOR, Theodore. The Maldonado Miracle. Harcourt. 2003. Tr $17. ISBN 0-15-205037-X; pap. $5.95. ISBN 0-15-205036-1. Gr 4-8–José, 12, risks crossing the US/Mexico border illegally in order to join his father who is working in the rich farmlands of California and finds both danger and friendship in unexpected places. He also learns the necessity of holding onto dreams and being honest about what is important to him.

Nonfiction

LOYA, Olga. Momentos mágicos/Magic Moments: Tales from Latin America Told in English and Spanish. tr. by Carmen Lizardi-Rivera. August House. 1997. pap. $11.95. ISBN 0-87483-497-X. Gr 4 Up–Whether extrapolated from European models or rooted in the more ancient storytelling traditions of Latin America, the tales in this wonderful collection range from scary stories to tales of tricksters and powerful women to Native American myths. Perfect for reading aloud or alone.

HIGH SCHOOL

Fiction

BACA, Jimmy Santiago. The Importance of a Piece of Paper: Stories. Grove/Atlantic. 2004. Tr $22. ISBN 0-8021-1765-1; pap. $12. ISBN 0-8021-4181-1. Gr 10 Up–From the orphaned and institutionalized “Runaway,” whose only hope for a decent life may be the nest egg his grandmother saved for him from her Social Security checks, to the siblings at loggerheads over their inheritance, these stories of contemporary Latinos highlight the intergenerational bonds and the ties that bind families and rip them apart. BORGES, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. tr. by Andrew Hurley. Viking. 1998. Tr $40. ISBN 0-670-84970-7; pap. $18. ISBN 0-14-028680-2. Gr 10 Up–Avid high school readers, dipping particularly into the stories from El Aleph and the four late stories that constitute Shakespeare’s Memory, will discover lucid presentations of the mysteries (and terrors) of the universe. They will also discover that Hispanic writers need not limit themselves to ethnic themes, even though Borges’s explorations of Argentina’s gauchos and gangsters (“The Story from Rosendo Juarez”) deal with the violence inherent in machismo. PADILLA, Ignacio. Shadow without a Name. tr. by Peter R. Bush & Anne McCleane. Farrar. 2003. Tr $22. ISBN 0-374-26190-3. Gr 10 Up–This international bestseller is a political thriller written with consummate skill. Ranging across desolate landscapes from both World Wars and into the 1960s, Padilla’s tale is full of characters who are almost never whom they seem to be and are as mistrustful of the “face” of reality as teenagers themselves. (Spanish edition: Amphitryon.) RUIZ ZAFÓN, Carlos. The Shadow of the Wind: A Novel. Penguin. 2004. Tr $24.95. ISBN 1-59420-010-6; pap. $15. ISBN 0-14-303490-1. Gr 10 Up–Still a boy mourning his mother’s death as the book begins, Daniel discovers a little-known book called The Shadow of the Wind. As he grows up, his life begins to echo that of the mysterious author, even to the circumstances of his first love, and he is shadowed by a man whose face has been burned off and by a sadistic policeman. Teens will respond to the book’s oppressive aura, its mystery, and the forbidden romance at its heart.

Nonfiction

GUEVARA, Ernesto “Che.” The Motorcycle Diaries. Ocean. 2004. Gr 9 Up –The star power of Gael García Bernal, playing Guevara in the movie of the same title, will draw attention to this open-hearted journal, based on notes taken during a trip through South America. Some adults will comb the entries searching for signs of the radical to come; and may object to teenagers reading this book. Teens will read it anyway, and Chicanos with a strong ethnic identity may recoil at Guevara’s labeling himself a white man. (Spanish edition: Diarios de Motocicleta) URREA, Luis Alberto. By the Lake of Sleeping Children: the Secret Life of the Mexican Border. Doubleday. 1996. pap. $12. ISBN 0-385-48419-4 . Gr 10 Up–After students devour the essay on Mexican obscenity and Spanglish, they will be appalled, repelled, and moved by the other essays, detailing “ordinary” life for the poorest of the poor, who live in the city dump of Tijuana. They will also more nearly understand why so many Mexicans and Central Americans come north for a better life and may even admire some of the struggling teenage heroes like Rubén and Braulio whom Urrea profiles. URREA, Luis Alberto. Vatos. Cinco Puntos. photos. by José Galvez. 2000. pap. $19.95. ISBN 0-938317-52-0. Gr 9 Up–Black-and-white photographs, selected from more than 30 years of Galvez’s work, accompany Urrea’s free-verse poem of tribute. Part hymn, part elegy, it depicts the breadth of Mexican-American masculinity, from weary and wrinkled grandfathers, to middle-aged men graduating law school, to gang members sporting bandannas and tattoos, to altar boys “grown up to be curas [priests].”

---

Coop Renner is a librarian at Hillside Elementary School, El Paso, TX